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François Villon in English Poetry: Translation and Influence PDF

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Volume XV François Villon in English Poetry Z00 Pasc Book B.indb 1 02/10/2018 16:19 ISSN 2043–8230 Series Editors Karl Fugelso Chris Jones Medievalism aims to provide a forum for monographs and collections devoted to the burgeoning and highly dynamic multi-disciplinary field of medievalism studies: that is, work investigating the influence and appearance of ‘the medieval’ in the society and culture of later ages. Titles within the series will investigate the post-medieval construction and manifestations of the Middle Ages – attitudes towards, and uses and meanings of, ‘the medieval’ – in all fields of culture, from politics and international relations, literature, history, architecture, and ceremonial ritual to film and the visual arts. It welcomes a wide range of topics, from historiographical subjects to revivalism, with the emphasis always firmly on what the idea of ‘the medieval’ has variously meant and continues to mean; it is founded on the belief that scholars interested in the Middle Ages can and should communicate their research both beyond and within the academic community of medievalists, and on the continuing relevance and presence of ‘the medieval’ in the contemporary world. New proposals are welcomed. They may be sent directly to the editors or the publishers at the addresses given below. Professor Karl Fugelso Professor Chris Jones Boydell & Brewer Ltd Art Department School of English PO Box 9 Towson University University of St Andrews Woodbridge 3103 Center for the Arts St Andrews Suffolk IP12 3DF 8000 York Road Fife KY16 9AL UK Towson, MD 21252–0001 UK USA Previous volumes in this series are printed at the back of this book Z00 Pasc Book B.indb 2 02/10/2018 16:19 François Villon in English Poetry Translation and Influence Claire Pascolini-Campbell D. S. BREWER Z00 Pasc Book B.indb 3 02/10/2018 16:19 © Claire Pascolini-Campbell 2018 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Claire Pascolini-Campbell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2018 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge isbn 978 1 84384 514 0 D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk ip12 3df, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, ny 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate This publication is printed on acid-free paper Z00 Pasc Book B.indb 4 02/10/2018 16:19 Contents A Note on the Poets and the Poems vi Acknowledgements viii Introduction 1 1 Then and Now: The Legend of Villon in the Middle Ages and in Modernity 16 2 Villon and Swinburne: Finding and Singing Villon 32 3 Villon and Rossetti: Poetics of Strangeness 57 4 Villon and Pound: Modernity and the ‘Mediaeval Dream’ 85 5 Villon and Bunting: Prison-Writing and Parody 114 6 Villon and Lowell: Imitation and the Visible Translator 141 Conclusion 163 Appendices 183 Bibliography 196 Index 211 Z00 Pasc Book B.indb 5 02/10/2018 16:19 A Note on the Poets and the Poems This book focuses on translations of the medieval French poet François Villon by five high-profile Anglophone poets writing in Britain and the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, namely: Alge- rnon Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ezra Pound, Basil Bunting, and Robert Lowell. Villon is, of course, a popular subject for translation into English and there are many poets to choose from amongst his heirs. The rationale behind the current selection is three-fold. First, the poets under discussion give a chronological view of the vogue of translating Villon, their texts spanning a one-hundred-year period from the earliest, rhymed translations of his work in the 1860s to freer, postmodern imitations in the 1960s. Second, at least four of the five – with the possible exception of Bunting – are major literary figures whose translations resonate both within and outside of their periods. Swinburne, Rossetti, and Pound in particular have played crucial roles in bringing Villon to the attention of successive generations of Anglophone poets. Finally, the five poets have also been selected because of the extent to which they knowingly respond to one another’s versions of Villon, serving to demonstrate how the process of Anglicising this medieval French poet has been fuelled as much by collaboration, as by competition. Each chapter includes detailed studies of how the poets named above have reacted to Villon, as well as comparative analyses of their transla- tions. I have been guided by their preferences in my focus on Villon’s shorter, lyric poems as opposed to the fabric of the Testament. Indeed, the same poems are selected again and again for linguistic transferral and the five poets engage with the following texts in particular: the ‘Ballade des dames du temp jadis’, the ‘Regrets de la belle Heaulmiere’, the ‘Ballade pour prier Nostre Dame’, and the ‘Ballade des pendus’. These, as well as other lyrics from the Testament and Poésies recur throughout the anal- ysis. On the other hand, less time has been spent on the Lais, Villon’s vital precursor to the Testament having escaped sustained translation by any of the poets under discussion. Z00 Pasc Book B.indb 6 02/10/2018 16:19 A Note on the Poets and the Poems vii The book, then, gives a snapshot of Villon’s oeuvre as translated into English by a specific group of poets. For readers wishing to widen the lens, a comprehensive list of English versions of Villon composed during the period covered by the analysis is included in Appendix 1. Z00 Pasc Book B.indb 7 02/10/2018 16:19 Acknowledgements I am grateful to Chris Jones and David Evans for their unwavering support and enthusiasm for this project. I am also delighted to acknowledge the help of Michael O’Neill and Emma Sutton, whose insights contributed to the shaping of this book. In addition, I would like to thank my publishers, and Caroline Palmer in particular, for their input and advice. Thank you, too, to the anonymous reader for their intellectual generosity and rigorous edits. I owe a special debt to my family and to my husband, Tom, who have supported me at every stage of this project. I would also like to offer grateful acknowledgements for permission to reproduce the following copyright material: “A Prayer for My Grand- father to our Lady” from LORD WEARY’S CASTLE by Robert Lowell. Copyright 1946 by Robert Lowell. Copyright © Renewed 1974 by Robert Lowell. Translated and reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.; “Ballad for the Dead Ladies” by François Villon, translated by Robert Lowell from COLLECTED POEMS by Robert Lowell. Copyright © 2003 by Harriet Lowell and Sheridan Lowell. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.; “UNE BALLADE DES FEMMES PERDUES” by William Faulkner. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Z00 Pasc Book B.indb 8 02/10/2018 16:19 Introduction François Villon, fifteenth-century versifier and alleged denizen of the Parisian criminal underworld, haunts English poetry like a restive spirit. Perhaps only Dante is comparable among other medieval European poets for the extent to which his oeuvre has navi- gated linguistic and temporal boundaries: like Dante, Villon becomes many different poets in his poetic afterlife through a process of transfor- mation and absorption. First revived by the Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic poets in Victorian England, his appeal has extended to Modernists and Postmodernists in the British Isles and North America alike, and his influence reveals itself in the work of some of the most canonical writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as Eliot, Yeats, and Faulkner. The activity of translation has been key to his posthumous survival and the number of English versions of Villon has continued to grow. However, despite the frequency with which his work has crossed linguistic barriers, there have been few sustained analyses of the resulting translations and adaptations, or, indeed, of the methods and motivations of the translators. Instead, scholars have tended to approach the topic of Villon in English through the medium of reception studies, and readers wishing to know more about that interesting topic have many resources avail- able to them. James K. Robinson, Glen Omans, and Michael Morsberger, for example, have each examined the surprisingly ubiquitous presence of Villon in Victorian literature and literary criticism.1 Similarly, in the introduction to François Villon in his Works: The Villain’s Tale, Michael Freeman provides a detailed survey of Villon’s reception on either side 1 James K. Robinson, ‘A Neglected Phase of the Aesthetic Movement: English Parnassianism’, PMLA, 68 (1953), 733–54; Glen Omans, ‘The Villon Cult in England’, Comparative Literature, 18 (1966), 16–35; Michael Morsberger, ‘Villon and the Victorians: The Influence and the Legend’, The Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, 23 (1969), 189–96. Z00 Pasc Book B.indb 1 02/10/2018 16:19

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